Free to draw inspiration from the cultures of their compatriots

JMLeave a comment

A consistent application of the language of cultural appropriation pushes us to ask absurd questions and draw the wrong conclusions. If the concept has nonetheless become so prominent, it is because there are some cases of supposed cultural appropriation that really are unjust. Is there some way to express what is wrong with them that is less likely to lead us astray?

Let’s get back to that Cinco de Drinko party. The students who participated in it really did do something wrong, and the idea of cultural appropriation has spread so quickly in good part because it promises to explain what made their behavior so hurtful. But a closer look reveals that the idea of cultural appropriation does not capture what was most offensive about the party, and that there is a better way of expressing what philosophers would call its “wrong-making feature.”

According to the language of cultural appropriation, what was so wrong about the party is that students who are not Latino appropriated some of the most iconic elements of Mexican culture for their own purposes. But this would have a highly implausible implication. Ponchos and sombreros are part of traditional Mexican culture. Maids’ outfits and construction vests are not. So from the perspective of cultural appropriation, the students who wore ponchos or sombreros were doing something wrong but those who wore maids’ outfits or construction vests were not. But is that really true?

Obviously, it isn’t. While wearing a poncho or a sombrero may arguably be tacky and insensitive, it need not entail any ridicule or disrespect. Wearing a maid’s outfit or a construction vest to a Mexican-themed party, by contrast, is a far more pointed and cruel insult. As Grace Rodriguez recognized, the intention was clearly to imply that Latinos are (or perhaps should be) cleaners or manual laborers, not college students or professionals.

But if some of the most offensive behavior at the Cinco de Drinko party didn’t consist of any form of cultural appropriation, we need a different explanation for what made it wrong. The one that seems to fit much better is, simply, that their choice of dress expressed deeply prejudiced and hurtful ideas about Latinos. The problem is neither that they wore a sombrero nor that they donned a maid’s outfit; it is that they did both to portray Latinos as a group of uneducated people who deserve to be mocked.

A similar dynamic is at play in virtually all cases in which the media invokes the specter of cultural appropriation. When a critic at The Toronto Star got a small business shut down in the middle of the pandemic for the crime of serving an inauthentic version of pho, the popular Vietnamese soup, for example, she justified her anger by invoking the times classmates in elementary school had mocked her for the contents of her lunch box. But while it is of course deeply wrong for kids to mock their classmate because they are not accustomed to the food she eats at lunch, shutting down a business that serves inauthentic pho will not help to save other children from that injustice. (If anything, the opposite is likely true: the more a particular cuisine enters a country’s cultural mainstream, even in a form that is inauthentic, the less likely it is that future children will be mocked for eating one of its dishes at lunch.)

Some of the most iconic instances of cultural appropriation similarly misidentify the wrong-making feature. Rock ‘n’ roll artists like Pat Boone have, for example, been blamed for getting famous by appropriating musical styles that were popular among African Americans, or even stealing songs from Black musicians who were barred from fame and wealth due to the color of their skin. Once again, it is both beyond doubt that these Black musicians were harmed and very much in doubt that the concept of cultural appropriation best describes the nature of that harm. For justice would have consisted not in stopping Boone from popularizing that music, allowing millions of people to share in its joy, but rather in challenging the social and legal barriers that stopped African American performers like Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, and Muddy Waters from enjoying the rightful fruits of their creative efforts.

Throughout human history, different groups of people have influenced and emulated each other’s cultures. This is especially true in Canada and the United States, which have always been a mix of the influences their residents brought to these countries from across the world. But it is also true in countries whose leaders pretend that their culture is somehow “pure.” Traditional Polish culture, for example, involves a religion whose origins lie in the Middle East, a system of numerals that was imported from the Arab world, a script that stems from southern Europe, and a cuisine that heavily features a certain starchy vegetable that is native to the New World.

It should be little surprise that some of the most celebrated epochs of human history have come at times, and in places, that allowed different cultures to inspire each other. From the Baghdad of the ninth century to the Vienna of the nineteenth century to London and New York in the twenty-first century, it was cultural hybridity that allowed multiethnic societies to thrive and shine.

For all these reasons, the joy of mutual influence is not a sin against which diverse societies should be on guard; it is the key promise they hold out to us if we get things right. Instead of condemning cultural appropriation, we should seek to build a society in which members of every group are valued equally —and all are free to draw inspiration from the cultures of their compatriots.

— Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap

“Gethsemane” by Mary Oliver

JMLeave a comment

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did,
maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.

“Air Piano” by Billy Collins

JMLeave a comment

Now that all the twilight has seeped 
out of the room 
and I am alone listening, 

the bass is beginning to sound 
like my father 
ascending the flights of stairs, 

always the same cadence 
every weekday evening, 
a beat you could build a city on. 

And the alto is the woman 
I sat next to on a train 
who wore a tiny silver watch around her wrist. 

The drums are drops of water 
on my forehead, 
one for every inhabitant of China. 

And the tenor, perhaps, 
is someone’s younger brother
who moved out west and never writes

or a swan passing under a willow. 
But the piano—
the piano is the piano 

you gave me one Christmas, 
a big black curve
standing at the end of the room, 

a red bow tied around its leg 
while snow fell on the house 
and the long rows of hemlocks. 

Since then, I have learned some chords 
and a few standards, 
but I still love lying on the floor 

like this, eyes closed, 
hands locked behind my head, 
laying down the solo on “Out of the Blue” 

in the Fantasy Studios, 
Berkeley, California, 
on October 4th, 1951, when I was ten.

The bully Church is the insecure Church

JMLeave a comment

With Christians soon to be a minority in the United States, the question shouldn’t be how best to fight back and reclaim their lost status.

Rather, Dickson said, the question should be how Christians might “lose well”–carrying themselves in ways that reflect the hope and confidence and great love found in the gospel.

At present, Dickson said, the American Church is suffering from “bully syndrome.” Too many Christians are swaggering around and picking on marginalized people and generally acting like jerks because they’re angry and apprehensive. “Every teacher will tell you, the bully on the playground is usually the most insecure boy. It’s a compensation mechanism. If the boy were truly confident, he wouldn’t need to throw his weight around,” Dickson said. “It’s the same with the Church. The bully Church is the insecure Church.”

— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory

Celebrator-in-chief

JMLeave a comment

I think of my decade as an editor in chief as a season of being a curator, which is its own creative endeavor. Ultimately, I think the editor in chief of a magazine is a curator of attention. The Table of Contents of each issue is a way of saying: Here are artists and writers that deserve your attention. Resist the siren song of noise; make time for these creators.

I think there is also something diaconal about such a role: to be a good editor, you have to learn to take delight in the work of others. Most of the pages are voices other than yours. That’s a good, humbling exercise. But it is also a joy, because I think an editor-in-chief is also a celebrator-in-chief. 

— James K. A. Smith